CBS will announce its fall schedule on Wednesday but it told producers of six shows Monday that the network will order their series for the new season.

Two medical dramas will be included. “Three Rivers” will star Julia Ormond (“Benjamin Button”) and Alex O’Loughlin (“Moonlight”) about a team of transplant surgeons. “Miami Trauma” will deal with the intense work of a trauma unit in South Florida; it stars Jeremy Northham (“The Tudors”).

A new legal drama, “The Good Wife,” will star Julianna Margulies of “E.R.” as a woman whose husband, a Chicago district attorney, is sent to prison, forcing her to go to work as a junior associate in a law firm to support her three children. Christine Baranski (“Cybill”) co- stars.

A fourth drama, the still untitled spin-off of “NCIS,” had already been announced.

CBS will add one new comedy, “Accidentally on Purpose,” which stars Jenna Elfman (“Dharma and Greg”) as a woman in her 30’s who gets pregnant during a brief affair with a man 10 years younger ­ and changes her life to raise the baby.

CBS’s sixth new entry will be a reality show called “Undercover Boss,” which will use hidden cameras to show what happens when the head of a big corporation goes undercover as an ordinary worker in his company.

ABC on Tuesday is expected to announce a lineup for the 2009-2010 television season that contains no fewer than seven new dramas and four new comedies, according to people who have been apprised of the network’s plans.

The heavy slate of new programming reflects the network’s continuing attempts to find a breakout hit beyond its long-running series “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” Though those series continue to rank in the top five shows on television among the viewers that are most desirable to advertisers, they have not been enough to push ABC to the top of the overall network rankings.

ABC officials declined to comment on Monday about the network’s plans, which will be unveiled at a press conference Tuesday morning and in a presentation to advertisers later in the day in New York.Two people who were briefed confidentially on the network’s plans and who therefore spoke on the condition of anonymity said that several of the new dramas scheduled to have their premieres in the fall or the spring have supernatural elements. They include “Eastwick,” based on the John Updike novel about three witches in a New England town; “V,” a revival of the 1980’s series about the arrival of a group of seemingly peaceful aliens on Earth; and “Flash Forward,” in which everyone on Earth gets a glimpse of their futures and tries to adjust to what they now know is coming.

The more familiar crime and legal genres will contribute a few new dramas as well, including “Happy Town,” about a Minnesota village whose tranquility is shattered by its first crime in years; “The Deep End,” about four eager young associates at a Los Angeles law firm; “Copper,” which focuses on a crew of rookie police officers; and “The Forgotten,” a series about a crew of amateur crime fighters that is being produced by Jerry Bruckheimer’s studio at Warner Brothers Television.

ABC also plans to announce four new half-hour comedies, all of them headlined by familiar and highly successful lead actors. “Cougar Town,” stars Courtney Cox Arquette (“Friends”) as a 40-year-old divorced mom who reenters the dating scene in a football-crazy Florida town; and “Hank” features Kelsey Grammer (“Frasier”) as a former tycoon who, forced out of his job, begins spending a lot of time with his family.

Also on tap are “The Middle,” starring Patricia Heaton (“Everybody Loves Raymond”) as the matriarch of a working-class Midwestern family; and “Modern Family,” a documentary-style look at three families created by Steven Levitan and Chris Lloyd, whose credits include “Frasier.” One of the families includes Ed O’Neill, best known for his long run as Al Bundy on “Married with Children.”

ABC also is expected to bring back several series whose survival were in question, the people briefed on the announcement said, including the comedies “Better Off Ted” and “Scrubs,” the drama “Castle” and the unscripted series “True Beauty.”

Two other new reality shows also will be added to the schedule, including “The Shark Tank,” in which entrepreneurs pitch business ideas to potential investors, and a food-related series in which British chef Jamie Oliver travels to various American cities to help citizens learn how to use healthy, local ingredients in their diets.

ABC had previously announced that it would return next season with a number of its most popular series, including “Brothers & Sisters,” “Private Practice,” “Ugly Betty” and “Dancing with the Stars.”The network is expected to use its heavy slate of new dramas in an aggressive push for new audiences in the 10 p.m. time period, when for the first time next fall its only competition in scripted series will be coming from CBS. The Fox stations feature local news at 10 p.m., and NBC will begin Jay Leno’s new primetime talk show during that time period.

The plethora of new shows also raises the question of whether ABC will follow the lead of Fox in trying to more aggressively court audiences with scripted series on Friday nights, which in recent years has been the reserved for reality or news programming. On Monday, Fox said it would schedule its young series “Fringe,” which relies heavily on DVR and online viewing, on Friday nights, as well as a new comedy series with two African-American lead characters, “Brothers.”

Several relatively new – and heavily promoted – series will not return in the fall to ABC, including “Samantha Who?,” the Christina Applegate series that performed well when it followed “Dancing with the Stars” but which did not sustain those ratings in other time periods. Among series that failed to earn a second season on ABC are “Life on Mars” and “The Unusuals,” two quirky police dramas, and the comedies “In the Motherhood” and “Cupid.”

Also likely to disappear is the long-running comedy series “According to Jim” and a new series, “Surviving Suburbia.”

I read that CW gave up on Sundays for sure, they can't compete with the other networks. Rather they wil show info commecials or something like that. Really do any of you watch the CW? I get 3 different channels of the CW on my cable, WTF? It must be cheap for my cable to broadcast.

Really do any of you watch the CW? I get 3 different channels of the CW on my cable, WTF? It must be cheap for my cable to broadcast.

Thanks for the updates Ken

Any time, darling.

I would watch CW if Melrose Place is interesting. Having been a fan of Melrose especially in the middle years, I'll be watching the first few episodes to see if they match the intensity of those great seasons. We'll see.

I read that CW gave up on Sundays for sure, they can't compete with the other networks. Rather they wil show info commecials or something like that. Really do any of you watch the CW? I get 3 different channels of the CW on my cable, WTF? It must be cheap for my cable to broadcast.